Of Lust and Love
Tales from the Eroticon of Beau Kotchio
Volume I
Other Times, Other Climes: Historic Humor
Tales 1 to 19
For Adults Only
Beau Kotchio
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. The ebook may not be resold or given away to other people, including minors. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for your use only, please return to Smashwords .com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Copyright @ 2010 J. Beauxrêves Kotchio
Cover Photo: The Kiss by Auguste Rodin, National Museum of Fine Arts, Buenos Aires, Argentina, used with permission of Creative Commons’ Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
See last page for information about the author and other volumes in the series.
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Preface to The Eroticon, One Hundred Tales of Lust and Love
Albert Einstein famously said, “God is subtle, but he is not malicious.” Perhaps this is true in physics, but in matters of the heart I am not so sure.
To see to it that we mate to ensure the survival of the species, the Creator, through Evolution, has foisted on us Desire. And so powerful and relentless is this drive that we make fools of ourselves as we succumb to its peremptory dictates.
Love and Lust are serious business, often sweet, sometimes sad, sometimes frightening. Also sometimes really funnyso long as somebody else is involved. Only the recognition that we are all touched from time to time by the madness allows us to empathize with the victims. Smarmy censoriousness is certainly unfair. Likewise Victorian prudery. No pretending here, as we explore the reality of what you know people really do and say.
So come empathize, have a chuckle, nod in recognition, be shocked, or shed a tear, as you explore this varied selection of my favorite stories from The Eroticon, One Hundred Tales of Lust and Love.
—Beau Kottsio
Of Lust and Love: Volume I
Other Times, Other Climes: Historical Humor
The Tales:
1. The Joy of Music
2. Flour Power
3. Carnal Diplomacy
4. Flower Power
5. Envisioned Quest
6. Minute Waltz
7. Miss Winderbrooke’s Purse
8. A Call to Arms
9. Export Goodies
10. The Artist
11. The Princess and the Pee
12. Going Ape
13. A Tall Tail
14. Foreign Affairs
15. Iron Man
16. Dutch Treat
17. The Professional
18. Alienation of Affection
19. Joy to the World
Like a box of chocolates, each of my books of short stories is not to be gobbled all at one sitting. Enjoy them, but take your time...that way you'll find them more delicious. —Beau Kotchio
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The First Tale
The Joy of Music
The highly trained and experienced composer, trying to compose, hurriedly scratched note upon note on the sheet of foolscap propped on top of his pianoforte. Then he frowned and sighed, seized the paper, balled it up and tossed it over his shoulder. It fell among other scraps lying about on the studio carpet behind him. “Scheiss!” he exclaimed.
Upstairs, behind a locked door, the composer’s young wife boffed her lover. Brought to ecstasy for the third time, she caressed the young man’s hair and reluctantly insisted that he leave her. At the window ledge she tenderly kissed her swain goodbye, and he climbed down the trellis. She dressed, cooled her cheeks with a dash of cold water, and sneaked downstairs into her kitchen.
Through the open door of his studio, the great composer heard his wife humming. He smiled, then seized his pen and scribbled down the notes of her simple song. He sat back and regarded what he had written. It was sublime, miraculous.
What was it? he asked himself wonderingly. What was it that had made such an ineffably beautiful melody burble up in his wife’s throat, a melody redolent of deep contentment, satiation, and the complete and fitting solution for humankind’s worldly cares?
He sighed, shrugged, and added the counterpoint.
Today, two hundred years later, seated in our concert halls listening to the great man’s music, we too hear in it the same universal joy, and we reach for our companions’ hands.
Finis
The Second Tale
Flour Power
Heidi, the daughter of Hugo, the Miller of Kleine Neue Blauerberg, sat on the stoop of the mill with her elbow on her knee and her chin on her hand. She frowned. From the elevated location of the mill on the bubbling brook that turned the millstone, she regarded the charming thatched-roof cottages of the village nestled below in the plump valley, then raised her eyes to the thickly forested mountains and crystal blue sky. The prospect was beautiful, but her prospects were not.
At twenty-six, Heidi was alone. Heidi’s mother had passed away years ago, and Heidi had neither brothers nor husband. Her father Hugo had died a month earlier, leaving the mill to his only child. Now she was wealthy. Also competent, energetic, shrewd, thrusting, and pretty.
In any other era such a woman would think herself fortunate. But in the Year of Our Lord 1047, Heidi’s situation was parlous. A member of that new middle class of bourgeois who were creating wealth, her kind were despised by the ignorant nobility and envied by the superstitious peasantry. Worse, as she mentally inventoried the families who lived in the village, she could think of no unmarried middle-aged man of her class who might interest himself in a woman of her ripe age, a full ten years older than the usual bride.
Heidi sighed. What was a girl to do?
Now, in recent days, in the heat of the summer, when she had attended to her chores, Heidi spent many hours sitting on the stoop of the mill and gazing at the sky and mountains while she pondered her problem. So little of novelty enlivened this scene that she fixed her eye hopefully on the few openings in the thick forest where the narrow twisting path over the mountain might bring into view the rare traveler…a merchant with his cart, a nun or priest on pilgrimage, an itinerant troubadour, the occasional knight on quest.
Knight.
An idea suddenly formed in Heidi’s resourceful mind. “Just the thing!” she said to herself. Smiling, she rose and hurried into the mill for her shawl.
She had the village smith make her a heavy ankle cuff, a chain, and a chastity belt, all fitted with locks and keys. The man scratched his head with puzzlement as she left with these implements in hand.
Having packed warm clothing, bedding, and food, Heidi tacked a hastily lettered sign on the door of the mill: “Closed temporarily. Gone on pilgrimage.” She set out on foot for the mountain.
Eventually Heidi found exactly what she was seeking: a cave. It was located somewhat off the trail but was visible from it. Spacious enough to shelter herself and store her things, the cave also had a suitably large flat boulder at its mouth on which she could stretch out and wait for passersby.
The sun shone hotly on the bare rock but Heidi soon accustomed herself to it. Birds chortled above and below her in the trees of the mountainside. Little clumps of flowers…white, pink, blue, and yellow…cascaded here and there among the tumble of nearby rocks.
Heidi took off all her clothes, lay on her robe on the broad level boulder, and sunned herself. From her aerie above the path she could see travelers before they would see her. The wait was tedious, for few people passed this way, sometimes only two or three a day, and she did not wish to be seen by them…except the one stranger for whom she waited. From time to time, she turned herself so she would brown evenly all over.
At last the one she was waiting for appeared. A knight! Clad in chain mail over a colorful tunic, his helmet hanging from his saddle, he was mounted on a huge war horse that ambled along the winding rocky path.
Heidi had already padlocked her chain to an adjacent tree; now she clamped the cuff about her ankle, slipped the chastity belt over her crotch and locked it in place about her waist. She assumed her planned position on her knees. Save for the heavy metal bands about her ankle and middle, she was naked. She drew the locks of her waist-length hair over her shoulders modestly to cover her breasts.
As the knight’s horse shuffled slowly into view, Heidi aroused her emotions and actually managed to shed a few tears as she called out to the knight weakly, “Help, sir knight. O please—help me.” She raised her arm and waved feebly.
The knight pulled up on the reins of his horse, stopping it in the path below Heidi’s boulder. He looked up, shading his eyes with his hand. His closely cropped hair was blond, as was his luxuriant mustache. His cheeks were ruddy, his eyes a clear blue, his jaw square. His mouth opened in a broad smile, exposing a faultless set of white teeth.
“Help,” Heidi called again weakly and waved at him.
The knight guided his horse off the path and up to the girl’s perch before the cave until his mount stood level with her boulder. He leaned forward and rested his crossed wrists on the pommel of his saddle, his big hands hanging loosely.
“Fair maiden,” he said with the corners of his mouth turned up, “it would seem thou hast a problem.”
“Indeed, sir knight, as you see, I am a prisoner.”
She lay back on her elbows, one knee cocked up, one leg extended. The leg that was extended bore the cuff and chain that she had padlocked to the nearby tree.
“Ah, a dragon hath placed thee here?” He spoke in High German but grinned widely as if he suspected some trickery were afoot.
“Oh no, kind sir, nothing so drastic as that. In fact, they say dragons exist no longer. No, it was merely a foul Ogre, a truly vile troll, who carried me off to his cave, this very cave that she see behind me.” She pointed in the direction of the ominously dark opening. “He’s not here now, but he will return shortly.”
“I see.” The knight gazed at the cave then swept his eyes over Heidi’s body and smiled.
The knight had seen many naked women. Her nudity was nothing novel. Her eyes were bright and her hair silky like so many he had bedded. But this woman differed from all the others. Her skin glowed with a healthy tan, and her muscles were well defined without having bulked up. Her body was shapely, too, with breasts that stood out over a narrow torso and hips that flared to nicely rounded thighs. In sum, a choice piece.
“And what help dost thou require?” he inquired, as if the fact that she was a prisoner did not automatically entitle her to his protection. In that era, people in chains were not an uncommon sight. In fact, he thought chains not unsuitable for a woman such as this, as well as the iron chastity belt affixed about her loins. A beautiful wench was valuable property.
“Why, to answer your question, I wish to be free.”
“So do we all,” he responded philosophically and rolled his eyes. “And what recompense shall I have for my trouble?”
Heidi drew a strand of blond hair through her teeth. “Anything is possible,” she hinted, “but to begin with, the satisfaction of having done a fine knightly deed.”
“Ah.”He studied the mouth of the cave. “Perhaps there is gold or other treasure in the cave?”
“Oh my, no. And you must not enter,” she added breathlessly, “for it is filled with snares. And surely, if you rob him, the Ogre will pursue you. Better you should just free me and carry me off.”
“And will the beast not pursue us if I carry you off?”
“Well, no. You see, that is quite different from taking his other treasures. For he who steals stolen goods steals not, but merely liberates.”
The knight frowned as he rehearsed her last sentence to make sure he had understood her. “I doubt me he would see it that way,” he shrugged and hefted the reins of his bridle, as if he would leave.
“O brave knight,” Heidi cried desperately, “would you abandon me here to lie exposed under the hot sun?” She managed another tear.
“It seems to suit you well enough,” he replied, shifting his speech into low vernacular. He smiled, appreciating her golden tan.
“At least tarry a while and speak with me. I am lonely.”
She turned over and lay on her stomach. Propped on her elbows, she bent up her unchained leg at the knee. The dimples above her buttocks nicely set off the plump round humps of her bottom.
Nice ass, he mused.
She plucked a flower and sucked its stem. “Why have you no spear nor lance?” she asked.
Not willing to admit he’d broken his last spear in a joust in which he was defeated, he shrugged. “I fight best with my sword. Furthermore,” he smiled, “I have all the spear a man needs to lance that which needs opening.”
“Is it so brave a man who does service in that manner?”
“Perhaps not so brave, unless the formidable beauty of the portal strikes timidity in his desirous heart. Yet it is a service much sought after.”
“Truly.” She smiled and lowered her eyelashes. “But even an Ogre gives such service.”
“Has he such a lance?”
“Long and thick.”
“Much used?”
“Speaking frankly, worthy paladin,” for she was growing weary of embellishing the metaphor, “the Ogre uses me daily in the most atrocious fashion.”
“Yet, if you mind not my saying so, you appear none the worse for it.” His eye appraised her figure appreciatively.
“Perhaps. But you must imagine the condition of my feelings. To be pawed by such a loathsome creature! Ugh!”
“So you have been ‘pawed,’ as you say?”
“Well and truly.” She rose and knelt on her haunches, opening her knees so he might see more clearly the treasure that lay hidden under the metal bars criss-crossing her crotch. “You can imagine!”
“Oh I have very little imagination. Tell me how he uses you.”
“Very ill. When first he caught me…I was picking berries on yon hillside…he carried me off over his shoulder to this cave. He stripped me and burned my clothes, leaving me completely naked, as you see, with only a thin blanket with which to cover myself in the cold night. He feeds me, but I think only to fatten me, for I fear he plans to eat me. Meanwhile, every night, he uses me most brutally.”
I’d do so myself, thought the knight, given the chance. And he was certainly being offered the chance. He merely nodded. “Say on,” he encouraged.
“First he beats me a little, to encourage my efforts and fire his lust. Then he forces me to my knees before him for a most unnatural if pleasant preparation. Once armed, so to speak, he then tosses me on my back, or front, or up against the wall of the cave, and takes his dreadful pleasure in my body. Imagine!”
The knight did.
“And then he locks me again in this metal belt.”
“Isn’t that thing uncomfortable?” the knight asked curiously.
“Of course, but it guards that which is most precious to me.”
“And no doubt to your Ogre, since he has placed you in it.”
“Naturally I would fain dispense with it, were I able to.” She raised the padlock in her fingers. “But as you see, it is locked securely to my person.”
“So…in his absence…you are really not able to free yourself from the belt?”
“No, another must do it. However, I do know where the horrid beast keeps the key hidden in the cave.”
“Tell me, and I will fetch it.” He was unable to disguise his leer.
“Nay, free my ankle first and I will fetch it myself.”
“Where then is the key to the chain about your ankle.”
“That key the Ogre carries on his person.”
The knight scratched his head. “What then is that key hanging on the ribbon about your neck?”
“Oh!” She had forgotten it, the key to the chastity belt. “Uh, it is the key to the door of my mill.” She pointed down into the valley. “I own that property.”
“Ah.” He raised his hand to his eyes to shade them from the sun. He gazed at the mill down in the valley. “Ah,” he repeated, “how very interesting.”
The impecunious knight at last realized the fairer prospects involved in the pretty woman’s proposition.
She noted his quickened interest. She shifted from her knees to her bottom and sat cross-legged such that those of her charms guarded by the metal ribs of the chastity belt were more openly displayed to his eye. She began to braid her hair, exposing her breasts.
He smiled. “You are a handsome wench.”
She raised her hand to her hair. “Thank you. The Ogre thinks so, too.”
“Speaking of this Ogre fellow, what if he should return?”
“No matter. He is a coward. He fears cold steel. With you to protect me, he may rage but he will not dare to bother us.”
“Us?”
“I will owe you my life, and therefore become your property.”
“An interesting thought.” The knight shifted in the saddle and looked down at the village. “By the way, why has no one from the village come for you? Your father, brothers, husband.”
“Why, sir, there is no one to rescue me. Husband and brothers have I none. I am an orphan. My parents have passed on to their reward, and now I own the mill there in the valley, femme sole. In fact,” she thought it wise to underscore her proposition, “if I belong to you, the mill shall be yours.” She smiled, wondering if there were any way to make things clearer to the big lug.
The knight was silent for several moments, pondering the situation and weighing the risks and rewards. Truly, he mused, I am bone weary of traveling. To settle down would be restful, if boring. This female’s got a mouth on her, like all these upstart bourgeoisie. But for a woman her age, she is remarkably well preserved…and clearly randy. And if things got too boring, I could always opt for the next crusade.
Heidi’s patience was waning. “Come, handsome warrior,” she said to him. She extended her arm full length and pointed to the mill. “Waiting for you there is a friendly hearth, good provender, and a well -warmed bed. Take me!” she cried.
The knight suddenly nodded decisively. “Fair lady,” he pronounced in a loud voice, the voice in which he would have addressed the Ogre had the beast been present to interfere, “fair lady,” he repeated, “you shall be mine!”
So saying, he whacked her ankle chain in two with a single blow of his great sword.
“Wow!” she exclaimed, “that’s a fabulous blade.”
“Get on my horse,” he said and extended his hand to her.
Heidi glanced at the cave, then quickly decided to abandon the clothing, bedding, and food she had stored there. After all, she could always come back for it when her knight was off on his quest.
“Mount,” he directed.
She promptly obeyed, thinking it a command she herself would be giving happily in due course.
He offered her his arm. She held on tightly as he swung her up behind himself onto the broad back of the big war horse. She embraced him, her arms around his waist, her naked thighs gripping his buttocks, her cheek against his back. The sun had heated his chain mail and it was hot, but not warmer than her heart.
“By the way”, he asked, “What’s your name?”
“Heidi.”
He nodded. “And how am I going to get you out of that chastity belt, Heidi?”
She fingered the key hanging at her neck. “Oh,” the resourceful young woman answered, “we’ll think of something.”
“Ah…Well then…onward, Rosamunde.” The knight snapped the reins, and the great beast carried them down the mountainside.
Finis
The Third Tale
Carnal Diplomacy
Don Paco Cortecalzado, Captain of her Spanish majesty’s exploratory carrack Nuevo Mundo, raised his hand to shade his eyes. He peered at the shore of the Pacific island off which their little vessel had just dropped anchor. “Let us hope that this time there will be no trouble with the natives,” Don Paco mused.
Standing at the commander’s side, Fra Diavolito Criscobal also raised his hand to his eyes. “Resistance to God’s will draws its own punishment,” the priest pronounced with pursed lips. It was an oblique reference to the spiritual dissension he had fomented at the last island their ship had visited. The ensuing riot had caused the death of many natives and, worse for the Europeans, the loss of two sailors who were irreplaceable so far from home in the vast wastes of the new ocean.
The captain shrugged. “Let us rather pray, Brother Diavolito, that these people see God’s will the same as you do.”
As the captain and his crew rowed ashore in the longboats they stared at the natives who lined the shoreline. The natives stared back at them.
The ship’s crew was armed with their swords and long-barreled arquebuses, the natives with their spears and shields. The natives were large men, well muscled from living close to nature. The mixed crew of Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese, and Venetian sailors was smaller, but also tough, and they wore armor under their bright green tunics.
The little green men in the cloud-covered vessel had been expected. The religion of the Motuleanu’alealones (Small-Island-Big-Canoe-People) regarded the faraway Ll’ueanana (Galaxies) as the abode of suns and planets like their own, and thus presumably peopled like their own island. They knew this was an historic first visit.
It was a visit of which they had been given portents. The island’s single volcano had rumbled three days before, shaking the palm trees and causing coconuts to fall to the beach. And the volcano’s wisp of gray smoke that always rose straight up in the blue sky as far as the S’homomo (Stratosphere) had thickened and darkened in color. Thus when the green aliens arrived, the chief and his people were ready.
Chief Motulana’nanalapo (The-Big-Man-With-The-Feather-Hat) had already given orders to slaughter and offer roast pig to Motu’papalele’lulu (The-Earth-God-Who-Blows-Smoke), the resident spirit of the volcano. He had also prepared a site in the forest at which a great feast would be held for the expected visitors. He directed the women to fashion head decorations and garlands and skirts of green leaves. And the men he instructed to sharpen their spears, just in case.
“Pan’guu,” Motulana’nanalapo told his men as they stood on the beach awaiting the strangers, “na titi oru caca lupu.” (Let us hope that these visitors come in peace).
“Let us hope,” the ship’s captain mused, as he clasped the sides of the longboat pitching in the surf, “that the customs of these people include the idea of offering a peaceable welcome to strangers.”
“Indeed, by God’s grace, let them be meek and peaceable,” Fra Criscobal muttered. “But as I am consecrated to Christ’s service, Captain, I pray you won’t scruple to back the Lord’s will with force.”
“Well, good Brother Criscobal, let me attend to diplomacy first, and we shall see about cultural conversion in due course. Mind you well what happened last time.”
Criscobal frowned sourly but kept his silence.
On the beach, the confrontation of Captain Cortecalzado’s armed sailors with the Chief’s armed warriors proceeded without incident. The eyes of the savages clearly betrayed their terror. But they also communicated a manly sense of self-esteem and willingness to make a melee if necessary. After all, they owned this scrap of island.
The Captain, by his own manly deportment, supported by the businesslike bluster of the sailors, telegraphed no sense of fear. At the same time, by his gestures and body language, he made it clear to the large man in the feathered hat that he wished only friendship. Furthermore, when one of the sailors placed a small chest at his feet, the Captain knelt and opened it, disclosing sparkling articles of trade.
The Chief grinned broadly. They expect to buy us with trinkets, he thought, but at least they mean well. Evidently there would be an opportunity for peaceful trade and fellowship. The roast pig would not go to waste.
Using sign language the islanders invited their visitors to parley and feast. Escorted by his armed marines, the Captain followed the Chief across the sandy beach and into the dark green jungle. Everyone else followed.
At the feast, the island women seated themselves next to the intriguing intruders. With their fingers, the women chose fat morsels of coconut-basted pig and fed them to the white strangers. To the sailor’s lips they lifted hollowed coconut shells filled with warm Cl’up (Berry wine). With precocious curiosity they touched the garments covering the visitors’ private parts. They wanted to know whether they were furnished at all like their own men and, if so, how well.
The captain, seeing this familiarity, warned the crew to be cautious about responding, as he feared the native men might become jealous. But as the evening wore on and he observed the smiles and encouraging gestures of the native men, he soon realized that these savages were used to sharing their wives and grown daughters around among themselves and were not averse to sharing them with their guests from another world.
Two by two, couples sneaked off into the underbrush. The captain drank the warm Cl’up and smiled benignly. Diplomacy was triumphing. War was being averted.
Fra Diavolito, seated at his elbow, fumed helplessly and pointed at the latest couple to decamp with their arms around each other’s waists. “This is disgusting!” he hissed.
“Nonsense,” countered Don Paco, “it’s clearly their custom, and more importantly, it’s likely the way all of us are going to stay alive.”
Without another word, the priest threw down his food, strode off to the beach, and had himself rowed back to the carrack.
Motula (She), Motulana’nanalapo’s daughter, had been directed by the Chief to sit next to the Captain at the feast. She had complied willingly.
“Anu tata lololulu?” (What is your name?) She inquired politely and touched the Captain’s green tunic with the tip of her finger.
“That’s my tunic,” the captain smiled, finding her childish interest in his costume charming.
“Thatsmytunic, anu pupu Motula?” (Named sir, would you like to make whoopee with She?) The comely maiden held a piece of coconut-basted roast pig to the commander’s lips.
He nodded. “Yes, it is delicious.”
His smile was all she needed. “Ko!” (Come) she whispered. She took his hand gently and pulled him to his feet. Laughing, he followed her into the bush.
They walked for a hundred yards through the thick tangle of leaves and vines until they arrived at a little waterfall that fed a tiny pool surrounded by large colorful flowers. There Motula had foresightedly laid out a bower of coconut fronds and a cooler of fresh coconut milk.
“Ko, Thatsmytunic!” she cried gaily and, throwing off her simple garment, she dove naked into the pool. Don Paco quickly undressed himself and joined her in the cool water. She swam into his arms, embraced his shoulders, and kissed him.
Later, as they lay together and she opened her legs to him and embraced his waist with her strong thighs, she panted as he labored at her. “Ko! Ko! Ko!” she urged. And he did.
Peace having been made by such means, trade next was established. Pots and knives were exchanged for fresh fruit and pigs. The two parties stood on the beach as goods were transferred to and from the longboats.
“I hope we shall see you next year,” Don Paco Cortecalzado said cordially as Chief Motulana’nanalapo clasped the other man’s forearm in manly farewell.
“Panu tiki tiko alalalulu na,” (Next time bring your advanced technology) replied the Chief.
Fra Diavolito Criscobal made the sign of the cross at the Chief. Good-naturedly, the Chief made the sign of the cross at Criscobal and muttered, while smiling all the while, “Pupu pa” (Up yours, padre).
The little green men rowed vigorously through the surf.
Soon the cloud-covered ship disappeared over the horizon, and the Motuleanu’alealones went back to work on their big canoes.
Finis
The Fourth Tale
Flower Power
The hot wind scoured the desert dunes, blowing sand into the eyes and robes of the emperor’s ambassador. On his first foreign mission, the young man and his impressive caravan were bearers of his sovereign’s impassioned plea to a neighboring king. It was an honorable offer of marriage, for the emperor sought to add to his harem the king’s daughter, reputed to be the loveliest unplucked flower anywhere along the Silk Road. For such a delicate mission, the emperor thought it best to send his own son so that the king and the princess would see what good features, strength, and charm the emperor himself might be assumed to possess. The desert traverse took a month, and the sight of the king’s battlements was welcome to the weary traveler.
The embassy entourage was received with every courtesy. The ambassador’s camels were taken to water while he was led to cool quarters where he bathed away the traces of his arduous journey, trimmed his beard, and donned a fresh robe and sandals. The king’s vizier himself then guided the distinguished emissary to the throne room. There the king received the young man’s credentials, extended dignified greetings, and inquired of the emperor’s health. Ever prudently fearful of the acquisitiveness of his larger neighbor, the king showed every indication of approval as the emperor’s son spoke his carefully rehearsed message. Indeed, the king was keenly aware that the proposed marriage would ally his family to that of the emperor and improve the chances of the king keeping his throne.
“Your sovereign pays me a great honor,” the king said, “to deign to think so highly of my best beloved child. I hasten to give my blessing. However, no doubt you have heard it said, wisely, that while a woman must ever do as she is bid by her master, it works wonders if she is asked. My daughter is a great beauty, it is true, but you should know that she is also, like her mother, a girl of high spirits. So it is also wisely said that a filly that would as soon throw over the traces as submit docilely to the bit, is better coaxed than thrashed. Thus, for both wise reasons, I invite you to speak directly to Princess Netice yourself and see what she thinks about the matter.”
“With the utmost pleasure,” the ambassador replied honestly, for he was eager to set eyes upon the prize that was the goal of his mission.
“Excellent. I have begged the princess to wait upon you in the garden of the women’s quarters. I do hope Netice will comply, if for no other reason than curiosity. I pray you will be as persuasive with her as you have been with me.”
“Your encouragement strengthens my resolve,” the prince replied as he bowed deeply and backed out of the presence.
As the vizier led him through the palace to the garden, the young man wondered whether the girl’s appearance and behavior would live up to her appellation, for “Netice” means “wild rose” in the language of the king’s country, which the young man had studied for six months before undertaking his mission.
As he had hoped, they found the princess in the women’s garden, seated on a bench beside a pool filled with lily pads and fragrant blossoms. Veiled, she remained seated as the vizier introduced the foreign guest and then left them alone.
“You have come from far away,” the girl said. The smile in her voice showed on her lips as she lowered her veil. “I hope your journey has not wearied you. Perhaps you would like to sit here next to me.” She touched the bench with her fingertips.
He joined her on the bench. “It is the wind more than the heat that makes the journey at times unpleasant. But it is rewarded, as is the traveler, upon reaching this place.”
“Yes, that same wind from across the desert eagerly leaps our walls and towers, overwhelming our defenses.” She raised her eyes and glanced at him before modestly lowering them again. “But it provides refreshment to the flowers of our garden.”
He smiled. “After such a long and arduous trip, the wind too is refreshed and cooled by the water as it brings its greeting to the flowers.”
“I think the flowers are dazzled by that hot breeze, which they fear seeks to caress their soft petals.”
“Surely that is understandable, as their beauty is beyond compare.”
“Well, some more than others, don’t you think?”
“I do. In fact, as the breeze moves among them all, surely it seeks to arouse one more than another.”
“If so, that would be the rose, the most romantic of all flowers.”
“In any garden, the rose always stands out.”
“Stands, yes. But if the wind is strong, the rose is tossed and bent and pressed down.”
“And no doubt forced to open itself.”
“Oh yes, completely. And then, with its petals spread wide, it is at its most beautiful, as if happy to be harried and blown about by the hot wind.”
“But if such a wind brings lightening, at least it can also conclude its visit with a refreshing shower―”
“A dew most delectable to all flowers, but especially to the rose.” She smiled. “You speak our language very well, Ambassador.”
“You are kind, princess. Of course, discourse in a foreign tongue is always challenging, but I sincerely believe I have understood every word you have spoken.”
“Then there is no more need for talk. So I will return to my room. And you will do whatever you think best.” She laid her hand lightly on his, then rose and walked down the path to the harem. She paused and looked over her shoulder only once.
Much later, as they rested in each other’s arms, the young ambassador remembered the purpose of his mission. He frowned. “I fear, Netice, that both the emperor and the king will be sorely displeased at the manner in which I have delivered their proposal.”
She pressed a finger to his lips. “Hush. If you will promise to take me away with you and master me, I will manage the emperor. And Daddy will be no problem at all.”
A wild rose indeed, he thought, as he undertook to caress her petals one more time.
Finis
The Fifth Tale
Envisioned Quest
Little-Doe knelt among the women seated around the small cooking fire at the center of the bark-covered lodge. While the others occupied themselves with pounding corn into mush, or skinning and gutting the fish they took daily from the brook, Little-Doe braided her thick black hair and listened attentively to the older women’s lively anecdotes and wise observations. As a young unmarried virgin she still had much to learn.
The topic of the moment was an instance of classic rape—the abduction of a female against her will. All of the women were still in a state of shock and anger and fear because one of the younger wives of their tribe had recently been captured in the forest and carried off by the braves of The-Men-Who-Steal-Women tribe who lived beyond the mountain. Now, once again, the experienced women around the fire undertook to teach the innocent girls of the peril to which they were subjected by the barbarous customs of their neighbors in the next valley.
Berry-Picker, who as Little-Doe’s mother was particularly concerned to impart wisdom, explained that the kidnapped women “are made to become hardly more than slaves to their men, their bodies available at any time, so as to bear many children.”
“Terrible!” chorused the others.
Fish-Gutter declared, “They steal upon and snare the unsuspecting gatherer in the forest at any time of day or night.”
“Horrifying!” the listeners moaned.
She-Who-Bleeds-Much-When-the-Moon-Is-Full declared, “Once, when my friend was taken, I ran and ran and got away!”
“How frightened you must have been!” the others chorused.
“Yes, I was truly frightened,” exclaimed She-Who-etc.
Then all the women turned toward a wrinkled old crone and begged with one voice that she tell her story. Corn-Shucker, as she was called, for indeed that was her name, having once been abducted by the other tribe had, after some time, managed to escape from her kidnappers’ village. Her unique experience having occurred years ago, she was quite accustomed to being prevailed upon to tell the others for the thousandth time the story of her enslavement by the strange men beyond the mountain.
“When I was taken, I was bound hand and foot and carried on a pole. I wept and screamed. It was useless. In their camp, they abandoned me to their women, who stripped and bathed me and clothed me in their strange fur garments. They spoke to me in words I could not understand. They brushed out my braids and tied my hair with ribbons.”
“Were you beaten, grandmother?”
“No, but I think I was treated not so badly only because they must have thought of me as valuable property…a slave.”
“They are jealous of us because we farm and take food from the earth,” said Berry-Picker.
“We farm, but they steal honey combs,” observed Fish-Gutter.
“We fish,” added She-Who-etc., “but they kill our brother, the bear. We make pots and beads, they make war. They only know how to be thieves and warriors.”
Corn-Shucker continued her narrative. “In nothing did they do as we do. In all things were their ways different. They ate meat roasted over an open fire, not uncooked fish strips as we do, and they did not make the corn mush as we do, but cooked wheat cakes mixed with bits of sweet cane.”
“How revolting it must have been to eat with them!”
“Nor did I know how to cook such food, much less stomach it. I felt useless to the man who was to be my husband.”
“What shame you must have felt!”
“Even before we were to be married, he took me into his tepee every night, dressed me only in strings of beads hung with little fur tails of white stoats—”
“Vermin!”
“—and he made me dance for him alone, removing my garments—”
“Horrid!”
“—and then made me lie with him, naked, on bear rugs.”
“Disgusting!”
“Beastly!”
“Vile!”
Shocked as always, the women fell silent.
“You were the only one who ever escaped?” Little-Doe asked.
“The only one,” Corn-Shucker replied.
“And none was ever rescued by our braves?” Little-Doe inquired.
“Oh no,” interposed Fish-Gutter, “their men are warriors, and stronger than ours.”
The other women nodded solemnly in agreement and looked at Little-Doe with concern.
“The sky is wide, the lake deep, the river swift,” said the old crone, concluding philosophically with the observation that “so, too, are the ways of the Great Spirit mysterious, and his reasons hidden.”
Returning to Little-Doe’s query, Berry-Picker admonished her daughter more practically. “You must never think to be rescued, thus you must always be on your guard when you go out to gather wood for the fire or mushrooms for the fish sauce.”
In the morning Little-Doe stood naked beside the bowl of cool water in the bark-covered lodge, as she did every morning, and washed her body. She and her mother were going up beyond the meadows to the mushroom beds in the forest. It was dangerous, but it was necessary, for it was not possible to make good fish sauce without mushrooms.
“Ahh,” Little-Doe’s mother Berry-Picker sighed, “I am tired today.”
“Then I will go alone, Mother,” the girl replied promptly.
“Daughter, it is dangerous to go alone among the mushroom beds.”
“I am not afraid, Mother, and I will act wisely.”
“You are brave, Little-Doe.”
“This I vow…No man, no matter of what tribe, will ever do to me what I will not have him do.”
Leaving her mother with this ambiguous thought, Little-Doe quickly pulled her fringed white deerskin tunic over her naked body, drew on her white deerskin boots, and fixed a colorful beaded band around her hair and forehead.
She hummed as she walked beside the corn patch on her way up to the high meadow and dark forest. Under her arm she carried a bowl in which to place the mushrooms she would gather.
As Little-Doe climbed up the meadow, the sky was wide and blue, the sun hot. She perspired as much from her thoughts as from the heat of the sun. But when she walked in under the great beech trees of the forest she felt cooler, and when she lay down to drink from the little brook that tinkled down over rocks and boulders, the water was clear and icy cold. As she strolled higher and higher up the mountain, little birds flew ahead of her, announcing to others of their kind the imminent passage of this beautiful red princess of the forest floor.
Little-Doe wandered from place to place in the forest, occasionally bending to pluck up the mushrooms she had been taught to recognize as food while carefully avoiding those that if eaten would kill. Gradually she passed into strange places so dimly lit that her friends the birds did not lead nor even follow. The dells and hollows she passed through thus were ominously silent, but she did not look behind herself or cast her glance from side to side. One would have thought she had not a care in the world, or perhaps that she was idly amusing herself with gathering mushrooms while waiting for something else to happen.
As the sun rose to mark its midday passage, its rays here and there made beams of light among the boughs of the tall trees. By a still pool formed by boulders blocking up the creek, Little-Doe found berry bushes from which she made an adequate repast. Squatting, and without even glancing about to test her privacy, she hiked up her tunic and urinated as women will, while fixing her gaze steadily on the invitingly deep water of the pool. Pondering thus, she thought of old Corn-Shucker’s tale, how young women were enslaved by men who nightly made them dance for them half clothed and forced them to lie naked with them on bear rugs having sex. Then, imagining how the cold water might calm her feverish thoughts, she pulled off her boots and tunic entirely, stood on a flat boulder with her arms over her head, and dived head first into the pool.
Dressing herself after her swim, Little Doe resumed her wanderings in the deep forest on the mountainside among the mushroom beds, moving slowly from place to place until the late afternoon sun began to persuade her that she must turn her steps homeward to her lodge. It had been a long day.
Suddenly, from a thick bush, a stick was thrust between her ankles. It sent her sprawling. She fell forward on her belly, and her bowl of mushrooms scattered in every direction on the path.
Before she could rise, a knee in the small of her back pinned her to the ground, and strong hands roughly pulled her arms behind her. The hands crossed her wrists behind her waist, bound them with a leather thong, and tied them in turn to her ankles.
Mustering her courage, she did not cry nor cry out.
Instead, as she lay hogtied, she looked over her shoulder into a face painted with streaks of bright red paint and dominated by a nose as nobly prominent as an eagle’s. The man’s eyes glowed hotly with animal lust.
“O brave warrior,” the captured maiden murmured, smiling up at him calmly, “pray tell me—what took you so long?”
Finis
The Fifth Tale
Minute Waltz
The couples at the Duke and Duchess of Glasterbarry’s New Year’s Ball swirled in the elegant circlings of the waltz. The Duke and Duchess annually offered this treat to the cadets of the nearby military school as a patriotic way to introduce them to the eligible maidens of the surrounding country estates.
The young people’s faces were flushed both with the excitement of the encounter and the exertions of the rapid dance, recently imported from the continent. Young Queen Victoria herself had become enchanted by the waltz, and so the gavottes and minuets of the previous generation were eagerly abandoned for this stimulating new dance craze.
The young men looked dashing in their bright red uniforms bedecked with medals and sashes. The girls looked equally brilliant in their wide hoop skirts, daring décolletage, and flashing jewelry.
One of the young gentlemen propositioned his lovely partner as he stared at her beguiling cleavage. “I say,” he drawled, “I don’t suppose you’d be disposed to a little frolic? You know, a bit of the old in and out?”
The well-endowed lass blushed. “I’d love to,” she admitted honestly. “But how? Where?”
The cadet turned his head slightly to the side and lifted his eyes to one of several little balconies that hung out over the dance floor.
She followed his gaze. She smiled.
“We can go exploring,” he explained, “and we can be back before the dance ends.”
“How clever of you,” she responded admiringly, “a quickie.”
“Precisely.”
She feigned breathlessness, asked to leave the dance, took his arm, and pretended to cool her cheek with her little Chinese fan. The couple wended their way slowly through the crowd, smiling greetings to their friends and bowing their heads to the older persons. Once through the hall entryway, they held hands and raced up the stairs.
She leaned her elbows on the balcony railing. He stood behind her, lifted her hoop skirt and petticoats, and yanked down her fringed drawers.
“By Jove, how delicious!” He praised the shapely upturned buttocks as he seized her hips. “Never seen such an arse!”
Conveniently concealed by her ballooning skirts, he took her from behind.
She hummed and moved her bottom in time to the waltz.
Finis
The Seventh Tale
Miss Winderbrooke’s Purse
Constance Winderbrooke sat up straight and smiled fixedly. Bored silly, she picked at the pleats of her taffeta hoop skirt. Connie and her mother were receiving in the parlor. Great aunts Amanda and Priscilla had come up from Clydesbog-on-Shannon especially to pay a visit.
“Did you know,” said Aunt Amanda, “that General Percival passed to his reward last week?”
General Percival had fought in all the great battles against Napoleon at the beginning of the century, including the great victory at Waterloo in 1815.
“Oh my, released at last from this mortal coil,” sighed Connie’s mother.
“His young wife had just had her seventh blessed event,” added Aunt Priscilla.
The Victorians were so constrained by the rules for proper conversation that they had become masters of euphemism and quite accustomed to expressing any delicate thought with extreme indirection.
From the doorway of the parlor, Flora, the young parlor maid, waggled the tips of her fingers to attract Connie’s attention.
Connie nodded slightly to indicate that Flora should come to her.
At Connie’s elbow Flora bent and whispered, “Beg pardon, Miss Constance, but there’s a young gentleman at the front door as says he wants to pay you a visit. He says he’s the gentleman what found your purse last night at the opera.”
Connie’s face softened as she recalled the pleasant experience.
“Miss Constance,” Flora murmured, “I didn’t know you’d lost your purse?” Flora was Connie’s age, and they often shared confidences alone in Connie’s bedroom.
“Oh, yes, well, Flora,” Connie whispered, “you see, he took my hand, and I quite lost it.” At this point, of course, she was referring to her head, not her virginity, which she lost a little later.
“We both ended up on our knees in the dark in the opera box. He was really quite persistent in feeling everywhere for my purse. And just imagine, the wicked thing was under my dress all the time. I’m not surprised he has come to be thanked.”
“I think he’s come for more than that, if you ask me. He says he has been suffering ever since from a certain stiffness, and he wonders if you’d be kind enough to suggest a cure.” Flora’s ear was well trained, and she had repeated the visitor’s message with precision. “What shall I tell ‘im?” she concluded.
“Well, I do feel much obliged to him. Let’s see.” She put her finger to her chin. “Ah. Tell him that such stiffness is best cured by massage and vigorous exercise. Can you remember that?”
“Yes, Miss.” Flora had an excellent memory. She curtsied and departed.
She was back in two minutes. She bent and whispered in Connie’s ear. “He says he knows that, but he asks whether you’d be good enough to come around with him to his apartments to show him just how the massage should be done.”
“Tell him it would give me great pleasure to accommodate him, but not now, as I have company. However, I shall be happy to make the excursion in the afternoon, before tea time, and hope that he will not suffer overly until I am able to take this weighty matter of his in hand.”
“Yes, Miss.” Flora curtsied and quit the parlor. She returned in three minutes.
“What did he say to that?” Connie whispered.
“He says that when it comes to the laying on of hands, you are truly an angel of mercy.”
Connie smiled. “Tell him I shall lavish as much care on his pain as if I were kissing my own sweet baby.”
“Yes, Miss. Besides the massage, he wonders what vigorous exercise you were referring to?”
“Ah. Well, tell him I prefer riding above all else, especially at full tilt.”
“Yes, Miss.” Flora slipped out of the parlor. In a few minutes she returned once again.
“What now?” asked Connie, frowning with a smirk.
“He says he is quite enchanted with the vision of you kissing the baby, and he adds that, if you will but visit him at two o’clock this afternoon, he shall find it an extreme pleasure to give back to you all the kindnesses you have promised to concede to him.”
“Excellent man.” Connie giggled. “Tell him that, in the meantime, to preserve him from his misery until I shall come for him, he may wish to massage the stiff area himself, applying a bit of oil of lilac.”
Flora was gone and back almost immediately. “He says to tell you he’s already been doing that all night incessantly, and that indeed it gives him periodic relief. But he says only inside your ladyship’s purse is the medicine that’s good for what ails him.”
“No doubt. Well then, Flora,” Connie replied as she removed the locket from her necklace, “take him this as an earnest of my promise that I shall surely be with him this very afternoon, lightly garbed for riding.” She smiled. “Also say to him that if, in the meantime, there is a swelling beneath his stiffness and it tightens to the point of turning blue, he should soak it in cool water. He should rest assured I shall give tongue to my feelings of gratitude for his having located my purse last night and filled it with such tasty sweet presents.”
“Presents, Miss?” Flora was a naturally curious young lady.
“Like candy filled with gooey cordials, Flora, and some strands from a lock of his hair, I believe.” Connie closed her eyes and envisioned the young man with the blond beard.
“Yes Miss, I see,” Flora replied, though she didn’t at all.
“And tell him…I know your memory is flawless, Flora …tell him that if he keeps insisting on beating about the bush, I shall bend over backwards to help him.”
“Yes, Miss.” Flora clutched the locket and looked up at the ceiling for a moment to make sure she had rehearsed all that she was to say.
Connie’s mother glared at her daughter and the maid. “Really, Constance, I should think you would show a little more consideration. Great aunts Amanda and Priscilla have come all the way up from Clydesbog-on-Shannon just to see us. Whatever are you and Flora up to?”
Connie blushed crimson. “I’m sorry, Mother. But, you see, there’s a poor young man at the door seeking a...charitable contribution, and I was simply attempting to ascertain...the particulars.”
Her mother turned to the parlor maid. “Well, Flora, would you please tell that young man that whatever my daughter has promised to give him, I will match. Then ask his address and, for heaven’s sake, send him on his way!”
Later, downstairs in the kitchen, Flora recounted Miss Constance’s latest escapade. As her memory was good, she was able to repeat the conversation word for word, but clearly she was puzzled by it. “Anyway,” she concluded, “when Miss Constance spoke, her cheeks were quite flushed. I do believe she’s somewhat gone on this one.”
“Of course she is, you silly twit,” Parsons, the upstairs maid, opined sourly. “Don’t you get it?”
Cook had listened with crossed arms and a fierce expression of disapproval. Finally, bristling with indignation, she intervened. “The trouble with our English upper classes is they can’t talk straight anymore! I say, if he wants a frolic with Miss Constance, he ought to say so right out, direct as can be, that since he sees as how her pot’s bubbling over, he wants to stick his spoon into her hot little pudding.”
“What?” said Flora.
Ah, the Victorians! To tell the truth, the honest folk below stairs were quite as given over to euphemism and metaphor as their betters upstairs.
Finis
The Eighth Tale
A Call to Arms
Strolling slowly along beneath the fringe of palm trees, Brother Antonio eyed the bare-breasted young women who lay on their beach towels or frolicked in the surf. The beauty of the female form…all curves and hummocks…entranced the young priest, just as women’s flashing black eyes bewitched him. Antonio roamed the boardwalk from one end to the other, then returned the way he had come.
Had he been a man who cursed (and he most devoutly was not!), Brother Antonio would have cursed the fate that had placed him at the Abbey of the Brothers of Recluse and then placed the Abbey itself on one of the pine-shouldered bluffs of the Costa Brava. Abandoning his Madrid parish, he had sought refuge from the itch that tortured him only to find himself surrounded here in tempting abundance by its very source.
Antonio loved women…or wanted to. He also loved his religion. As he tried to rationalize his predilections―on which so far he prudently had not acted―Antonio had come close to heresy. How, he asked himself, could he understand the needs of his parishioners if he had not himself experienced either the pains of love or the joys of sex they described to him in such detail weekly in the confessional? Had not the empathetic Jesus himself assumed the form of a man? Besides, Antonio reasoned, even if he obeyed the rules of Mother Church and remained steadfast in celibacy so as loyally to frustrate his urge to procreation, did the state of celibacy also preclude his enjoyment of the natural world’s entrancing beauty? Wouldn’t that actually fly in the face of God’s will? After all, the Creator in his good judgment had created not only all this colorful panorama of earthly delights, including the deliciously tormenting female flesh, but also inserted in man the esthetic sense with which to appreciate it. Surely just because one was on a diet didn’t mean one couldn’t look at the menu!
Thus did Antonio excuse his wolfish voyeurism while guiltily condemning his ambition to assuage the torment of his desires in the arms and orifices of the other sex.
Returning at dusk from his solitary prowling, he climbed up the narrow stone streets of the little village that lay on the hillside above the beach and its boxy white tourist hotels. At the village’s single restaurant he ate a fish soup and almost cried as the proprietor played his guitar and sang of the enticements of Love.
Finished with his meal, Antonio did not return to the abbey right away but wandered down again to the tourist zone. He strolled along the tiled pavement and looked into the windows of the bars, pausing now and again to gaze at the beautiful blonde maidens, vacationers from the Northern European countries, who laughed and touched the arms and cheeks of their Germanic male companions and allowed themselves to be closely embraced on the smoky little dance floors.
At a dark street corner, prostitutes accosted the handsome young priest and respectfully offered their services…just in case he was one of those vacationing here from the big city or another country. He allowed them to caress his cheek and to paw the midsection of his robe.
“Is there a brothel nearby?” Antonio asked in a strained voice. He addressed his question to one of the older, uglier women, choosing her not so much out of sympathy but to weaken his temptation.
“Of course, Father,” the woman replied eagerly, surprised to have been the one picked out. Tastes were strange, she remembered…it was why she could still work. “I’ll take you there,” she offered. She slipped her hand into the crook of the priest’s arm and led him off the main street down a dark alleyway.
“What are your preferences?” she asked him pleasantly, hoping he was not like the one who had made her undress while he preached repentance and then punished her with a whipping. Most of the religious ones, she found, preferred instead to have themselves flagellated in recompense for the sin they were committing. “What would you like me to do for you? A blowjob? Straight fucking? Around the world?”
“Oh no,” he winced, then replied solemnly, “I only want to look.” He hoped that by actually observing the acts of lust, he would somehow purge himself of his desire.
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